


Constellations

by Kahara_the_Ghostly_Galoomp



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: New Republic Era - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, POV Tionne, Planet Ossus (Star Wars), Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-08 21:28:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8862763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahara_the_Ghostly_Galoomp/pseuds/Kahara_the_Ghostly_Galoomp
Summary: Tionne, Kam, and others working at the site of the Great Jedi Library on Ossus share a celebration with some of Tionne’s old friends.Mainly friendship fluff with a bit of romance.Set in an alternate universe that diverges from canon around the time of the Dark Empire series and the KJA Jedi Academy trilogy. Originally posted on TFN forums as a gift story for Chyntuck in the Κρεμμυδανθοί (Onion Blossoms) anthology.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chyntuck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chyntuck/gifts).



> **Note on Canonicity** :  
> This runs alongside a Kam/Tionne Legends AU story that I may get to writing someday. The main difference that an EU reader might notice is that the NJO is based on Ossus in this universe. 
> 
> As noted in the summary, this was first posted as part of an anthology of fic-gift stories created by writers on TFN for Chyntuck as a wedding present. The original thread can be found here: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/%CE%9A%CF%81%CE%B5%CE%BC%CE%BC%CF%85%CE%B4%CE%B1%CE%BD%CE%B8%CE%BF%CE%AF-onion-blossoms-a-bouquet-of-fic-gifts-for-chyntuck.50033790/ (I highly recommend checking out both the other stories and Chyntuck's writing, by the way.)
> 
> Here is a Dramatis Personae to use while reading, because I know the pain of tracking any more than a handful of unfamiliar OC’s: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wlOCopBSsL_GI-m4xnMzOHPwz7sseVjHCOg5GCnm6Zs/edit?usp=sharing
> 
> My thanks to the beta readers, aka Ewok Poet (on AO3 as Ewok_Poet) and Gemma from TFN. :)

_Ossus, 12 ABY_

There was a unique sound to every ship, Tionne had learned. The engines and other systems had their own quirks that changed the resonance of their sounds, just like every musical instrument sounded a little different from all the others. One just had to pay attention and they could usually predict which vessel was landing without a visual – assuming the owners hadn’t made any major modifications. It was easy enough to hear over the quiet breeze; the wind had died down as much as it ever did in this region of Ossus after the sunset.

So she was out of the constructed shelter at the New Republic team’s base camp at the Great Jedi Library archaeology site and pelting down the path to the landing site with glowrod in hand well before anyone had time to spring the surprise on her. She heard a restless fluttering from the small flock of Elellumiwi data extraction specialists (most of whom had been gathered up in a fluffy-feathered, spider silk shawl-wearing group huddle against the chill night air) and muffled exclamations of surprise from some other researchers. The scuff of running feet and sense of curiosity in the Force behind her told her that Rona and her cousins were following close on her heels.

“That is a Chistori?” Trey asked in a dubious tone as they approached the landed cargo ship and got a clearer view of its passengers, who had started unloading the supplies. He eyed the whip-thin reptilian biped’s silhouette in the landing pad spotlights, undoubtedly thinking of Desann’s rather bad example of the species this past year.

Tionne had to suppress a chuckle. It didn’t seem kind to make the young Ysanna think she was laughing at his concerned speculation over whether he was going to have to fight this intimidating figure – it was just that it was Zy. True, he had the ability to knock a Gamorrean for a loop with one swipe of his tail, but she’d never seen him engage in such violence unless absolutely necessary. “No, he’s definitely not! Zymantas is a Sarkan. We were part of the same crew for years – on that ship, actually. Come on, I think you’ll want to meet them.” The inhabitants of the _Estrell_ hadn’t dealt with teenagers in years that she knew of, not having one in the crew since Tionne herself was that age. There was probably a reason for that. She hadn’t been awful as far as she remembered, but trouble prone? Indisputably.

The hum of wingbeats in the air told her that the Elellumiwi of the Ithamar voyaging flock had caught up with her and the kids as they reached the ship. She could sometimes catch a glimpse of the bioluminescent flickers of their pale-spotted feathers, though the tiny reptavians were swift, moth-like shadows against the darkness.

Rona startled at a chattering noise when they neared the ship and Tionne noticed that all three teens searched out of habit for the metal staves or rifles they had left in camp. "He's all right," she assured them when a lemur-like creature with striped fur appeared in the range of their glowrods' illumination. The animal gamboled around Tionne’s feet, moving with speed although with a slight shuffle since one of its hind legs was twisted and lined with old scars. “The _Estrell_ has a some quirks, and one,” she explained as she bent down to ruffle the fur of the creature’s tummy, “is that there are a few animals onboard. The fierce guardian you see before you is known as Xim the Despot.” Keena snickered at that, having recently developed an interest in galactic history. The furry creature stared up at the Ysanna reproachfully with saucer-shaped brown eyes, but relented into softer chirrups of cautious acceptance when Tionne properly introduced Keena and the others via verbal confirmation that yes, these people were with her, and through encouraging them to scratch behind his ears.

“What in all other-worlds is this?” Trey obviously didn’t want to be caught dead cooing over a cute animal in front of his cousins, and yet couldn’t quite seem to banish the hint of a smile from his face.

“Difficult to say. Eira found him wandering around on Nar Shaddaa, so he could be from anywhere. She thinks he’s probably something unknown crossed with a livestock-herding animal called a kriss, maybe as a genetic experiment of some kind. At any rate, he does his best to earn his name. Xim likes to manage people.”

 

And indeed, Xim managed their arrival at the landing pad with what Tionne assumed must be great panache for a kriss. The little group found themselves being gently nudged in the calves or ankles when they weren’t sticking to the route that Xim evidently had set in his mind.

Kam and Kyp, along with the survey team they had been working with that day, were already helping with the unloading of supplies when Xim shepherded his charges up to the ship. Tionne glanced at the two Jedi students as she helped a Quarren grad student move various items from one of the hovercrates into the team’s landspeeder. Kam looked calm and at ease rather than calm and stoic, from which she interpreted that Kyp was not being too much of a stinker today. A moment’s unspoken conversation by expression and eye contact with Kam (just one of the skills that they were developing from the shared experience – or was it trauma? – of minding four teenagers for the last few months) confirmed that things were going well so far.

Kyp had been less than thrilled when he had been sent to the Library research site to assist Kam and Tionne, since all of them knew quite well that it was to give both Kyp and the other students some distance from each other. The young man’s extraordinary Force talents had made him both an object of awe and of competitive aggression (which he returned with interest) from his fellow trainees at the new Ossus Praxeum. Reading between the lines of Master Skywalker’s explanatory holomessages, Tionne could tell that the situation had deteriorated even from what she remembered, and that Kyp was well on his way to turning Luke’s hair gray. She had been worried the whole thing would backfire. Actually, she still worried about that.

However, Kyp had become noticeably less hostile lately. He seemed to at least respect Kam, which was a start. Tionne had found it harder to create a rapport, given Kyp’s instant dislike towards her from their earlier days at the Jedi academy. It seemed to her that he saw his raw power as his justification for being accepted as a Jedi. Seeing that, she had tried not to let his comments rankle then or later. But it hadn’t been easy to deal with him – and it was still hard sometimes. He’d warmed towards her after the thing with the bantha spider, though. Her failure to report his embarrassing part in the tale to all and sundry apparently convinced Kyp that she might not be enemy material after all.

Vuka Shin found her with his usual impeccable timing just as she was helping the technical specialists Laerke and Timian check that the contents of one of the freight containers had arrived undamaged. The Nalroni ducked around other moving beings with their burdens and lifted Tionne up off her feet in a back-slapping embrace. Keena watched the reunion wide-eyed, looking taken aback by the tall canoid and his toothy laughter.

“How’s our favorite ronto thief?”

“That was a complete accident,” Tionne groaned, hiding her face in one hand. She really wasn’t even that embarrassed about the ronto incident anymore. Six years was more than enough time to let it die. It was just that she could see the sudden interest of the bystanders who overheard Vuka’s greeting. Sure enough, Kam was looking at her inquiringly and Kyp perked up like Life Day had come early, while Trey, Rona, and Keena all appeared confused – probably wondering if they had misinterpreted the Basic phrasing.

Before she could say anything further, the rest of the crew had shown up to greet her as well. Zymantas made an elaborate bow that could only be considered overly casual on Sarka, and Llinos fluttered by and tugged at Tionne’s hair gently before perching on the landspeeder. Some of the other Elellumiwi noticed the appearance of their distant relative among the arrivals and came over to shoot the breeze with Llinos in a rapid-fire conversation while Eira Tién, more reserved than the rest, nodded cordially and waved to Tionne. She smiled back and gave the Ocsinin navigator a brief one-shoulder hug, making a bit of a compromise between the fact that this was more or less her big sister and the fact that this was Eira. Xim wove around their ankles and insisted on head-scratches as Althya the Galidii cobra made a clumsy glide from Zymantas’ shoulder to demand her share of the sentient attention that was going around. Tionne petted the small reptile’s leathery hide and got a cheerful hiss in response.

Two slightly-built vulpine beings in bright clothing abandoned their tasks for a moment to dart over and around the supplies and people, switching between moving on two legs or four as convenient and sometimes leaping in the air as they danced around each other. Tionne waved as they finally caught sight of her in the midst of their game and rushed over. Taj reached her first and she bent down to hug the russet-haired Amaran.

“Well, look at you! Jedi Ti. How you’ve grown these last few years.”

Tionne just shook her head and smiled back at him. “So I have.”

Her old friend would never let a bad joke go out of circulation and he’d been making the “goodness how you’ve sprouted up” one ever since she joined his crew ages ago. Standing at full height, Taj Sinopa was not much bigger or taller than a Human child, but the spacer captain had a presence all out of proportion to his body. He was dressed up splendidly in an ossyth green jacket and darker green trousers that made for a striking combination with his fur coloring.

Their old mutual acquaintance and sometime opponent Min Albu, also beautifully attired in a deep violet blouse and pants with blue accents, arrived in a flurry of frost-shaded fur and acrobatic jumps. Tionne shook hands with the beaming Amaran female.

“A pleasure to meet you under – better circumstances, Min.”

That drew a confirming bark from Min, who seemed inclined to let bygones be bygones. They’d never been personal enemies, though Min was sometimes a problem to the crew back when Tionne knew her best. It had been her job after all. The latest developments Tionne had not been around for, having left to pursue rumors of Jedi historical troves a couple of years before she ended up at the Ossus Academy. But she could not say that Taj and Min’s marriage last year had come as a shock. Actually, Eira and Llinos were both going to owe Tionne credits on that.

“If you were anyone else, I’d say it was kind of strange that you ended up marrying the repo lady.” Vuka shared an amused look with Tionne. “But knowing you, that’s just business as usual.”

“It’s my charm at work.”

“Ha!” Min head-butted Taj gently. “You would be so out of luck. No offense, love – you can be charming, but your backlog of unpaid docking fees and maintenance costs when I met you? Not charming as first impressions go. Trust me. No, but you just had to go ahead and rescue every wounded avian and hungry pittin in sight. Got to be a little challenging to resent you, seeing all that.”

Perhaps that was an exaggeration, but Tionne knew there was truth in it. Taj could be vain, irresponsible, impulsive, and less than honest. But he did have a tendency towards rescuing, whether it was a very lost chitlik that had stowed away in a box of chooca nuts or an impoverished Rim world community in need of medical supplies. Or, just for example, a teenaged Jedi hopeful on the run, an Elellumiwi captured and sold into slavery under the Empire, a Sarkan exile with little experience in the wider galaxy, a Nalroni working for the Hutts and in way over his head – those kinds of people.

“So what did make you two decide to get married?” There was a chemistry that she remembered, but she had to wonder when they had gone from what she remembered to this.

Taj shrugged. “Well, you know she was helping us with the supply runs during that strange thing with the Emperor-clone or whatever he was. The enemy of our enemy and all that. Min was incredible – we really couldn’t have gotten through that crisis without her. And I was in love with her, but honestly I already had been for a while.”

“Besides,” Min said, “I realized that chasing this nincompoop around had become my hobby and I wasn’t getting any real work done. Somehow I was also stupidly in love with him. So I married him and I’m taking distance classes in business so I can do something that doesn’t require me to be gone all the time.”

Llinos surveyed them and made a feather-ruffling gesture that Tionne believed was similar to a Human rolling their eyes. “Amarans,” was all she said.

 

Introductions were made all around between the crew and Kam and the younger students as they helped deal with the last of the loading and unloading chores. Tionne observed with some relief that her friends weren’t giving Kam the full third degree like they had some of her past boyfriends. (Some of the past boyfriends had almost deserved that, but subjecting a normal being to the _Estrell_ crew in protective sibling mode could be something akin to stomping on a gnat with an AT-ST.)

A few of the archaeologists swung by to say hello to the spacers as well – mostly the less shy of the bunch who weren’t so reluctant to engage in conversation with their Force-sensitive cohorts. Vuka only had to mention the magic words “there will be food” to ensure that most of them would stick around for a little while. Tionne had half expected Kyp to get bored and wander off, but he and Keena and Trey were listening with fascination to Zymantas and Vuka’s account of the crew’s nearly disastrous visit to Geonosis. Rona and Llinos struck up a conversation about the Jedi and Ysanna archaeological studies taking place at the Great Library site, with one of the Ithamar flock Elellumiwi who specialized in ancient languages helping smooth translation. While the Ysanna teens had already picked up a truly amazing amount of Basic through practice and Force-aided learning, their first language was the Alsakan-derived Ysannan language. They were still a lot more fluent in speaking than understanding Basic. Min seemed to be having an animated debate with Zhincet, a Stennes graduate student working with the New Republic research group. Something about smashball, or so Tionne gathered from a few of the less arcane terms they were throwing around.

“So these are the infamous characters that you associate with?” Kam asked in an intrigued tone. She had seen him wandering from group to group, contributing few comments but being amiably present nonetheless. “From Corran’s account I expected more heavy armament and fewer rescued strays.”

“Mmm. I can see why it might sound that way, but you know how third-hand information can get distorted. They aren’t violent. Eira and Vuka both did some jobs that weren’t exactly harmless before they joined up, but they didn’t care for the death and destruction. Zy can deal some damage, but again he’s really not the kind.” She shrugged. “Most of what we were in trouble with the law for was, well, the other things.”

“Like smuggling, forgery, theft, failure to pay bills, ronto thieving, and public disturbance – whatever that means. A lot of public disturbance.”

“Public disturbance could be nearly anything. Though mostly Taj’s singing voice. There’s nothing quite like a tonally-impaired Amaran belting out the remix of ‘Twi’lek Dancing Girls’ at three in the morning to make good citizens cover their ears and call the constabulary.” That startled a smile out of Kam, which was always a good thing in Tionne’s opinion. He didn’t smile all that easily, but there was a sincerity about the expression that made it well worth the wait.

“We were hoping Min would cure him of that,” Eira interjected. “No such luck. Now we’ve got duets.”

At least onboard ship the sound dampeners would keep things quiet in the cabins, Tionne reflected. Not that it would do a thing for the time that the crew spent on the ground. There was a reason why everyone made sure to find distant lodgings from Taj’s when possible; the nocturnal singing was annoying in the extreme though it was considered quite normal among his species.

“I can too sing!” they heard from Min off to the side somewhere. One could never have an entirely private conversation within the wide range of a canoid’s hearing.

Eira just sighed. “Aiding and abetting.”

 

“When you said there was going to be food, I thought you meant you’d brought crackers and dipping sauce or something,” Tionne heard one of the researchers comment in an awed voice. It did look like a big meal in the works; Zymantas had brought out the meat cooker and was busily loading gornt steaks onto the grill, Llinos had vanished only to reappear with a bottle of what looked like her famous (among the crew, anyway) homemade namana-shuura sauce clutched in her claws, and Eira was busily slicing protatoes on a folding table that Vuka had brought from inside the ship.

Seeing they seemed to have food preparation department covered, Tionne joined the crowd in setting up crates and other items in the place of tables and chairs.

“You’ve brought quite a spread for this,” she commented to Zymantas in passing as she dragged a bundle of mesh chairs from camp past his temporary workspace. “It looks like a feast.”

He made a gesture of affirmation. “That’s because it is. Taj and Min wanted to do this since you weren’t able to be there for the wedding ceremony last year. That whole mess with Daala couldn’t have had worse timing.” From the way Zy said it, she could just imagine him taking the Imperial admiral to task for the inconvenience. She could half envision Daala apologizing for the trouble, too. Sarkans could have that effect on people.

“Besides, I’m pretty sure this is what people come to a wedding for – the food!” Taj grinned at her and made a thumbs-up gesture.

Zymantas snorted at this. “Still always thinking with your stomach.” He eyed the cooking gornt steaks and turned one over. “Not a bad idea, though.”

“That and the last customers insisted on paying for the delivery of the shipment in whole gornt carcasses,” Min added.

Considering the last customers, Zymantas nodded thoughtfully. “Weirdoes.”

“Yeah.”

Tionne chuckled. “All the same, I don’t think you’ll find any complaints here.”

 

The flock of Elellumiwi went into a tizzy over the appearance of a frozen bag of skinned ipkas that Eira carefully separated and loaded onto a smaller specialized cooking tray along with a ration of the namana-shuura sauce and scrubroot vegetables.

Meanwhile, Zhincet and some others had gone back to the base camp for a few food supplies from there as well – predictably, they returned with griddle cake mix, which was one of the few foods that the mix of teachers and students hadn’t completely tired of after months of the same. Eira eyed the griddle cake mix warily and shone a light on it to check for bugs. Finding none, she passed it along to Vuka to cook and also handed over a few handfuls of celonslay to flavor the cakes.

Kyp and the Ysanna trio helped Kam shred leaves for a goatgrass salad. Kyp looked a bit doubtful of the project. (The Ossan plant they used wasn’t actual goatgrass, but Keena had long since identified it as one of the edibles growing nearby – endorsing it with the high praise of “this has never killed anyone recently.” And it did taste like goatgrass, more or less. Somewhat less.) Taj and Min brought out a temperature-controlled crate of Korosian sweet ice from the cargo hold. What Tionne had thought was a bouquet of flowers that Eira set off to one side proved to be a kind of dessert as well -- or at least the Elellumiwi present fell on the yellow-orange blossoms with such gusto that it seemed like the most likely explanation.

To her relief, Taj seemed to have realized that it would be better to keep the alcoholic beverages out of circulation with Force-sensitive teenagers on the loose, and provided something carbonated instead. Thank the Force. An intoxicated Kyp Durron wreaking havoc was not something that she would have to worry about, or at least not for now.

Vuka and some of the researchers had set up an enclosed campfire and some improvised wind-shelters for the gathering. Both of those things were becoming necessary as the night grew colder and the autumn wind began to pick up from its earlier quiet.

 

Later, the main part of the New Republic team began to drift back to camp as the sedative effects of heavy eating set in and they longed for the warmth of their sleeping bags. A few of the more determined Elellumiwi remained in a group by the fire, with Xim and the gopher-like chitlik Zarth curled up beside them. Althya had long since been returned to the warmer environs of the ship.

The wind was much louder than it had been, making eerily voice-like cries as it moved across the landscape. But Tionne had grown used to it over time and even found a kind of comfort in the sound of it talking through the ancient Jedi structures and the canyons that surrounded them.

Eira sang a song about a bird that fell in love with the moon that she had learned on Najiba as a child, accompanied by the small harp that Tionne had given her as a gift before leaving the crew. Llinos had always been fond of that song, and the other Elellumiwi also appeared to be drawn to the story it told. Possibly inspired by the atmosphere, Vuka and Min told ghost stories that they had heard from other spacers, which inspired Kyp and Keena to attempt to out-spook each other until Zy put a stop to that with a tale that was scarier still. Taj and Min played a duet together, each on some kind of woodwind instrument Tionne had never seen before (she was very curious as to how the mouthpiece worked, given that their lips were more canoid than humanoid in structure). The longing in the music was so strong that it brought tears to her eyes.

Kam, naturally, asked for the unfortunate tale of Tionne the ronto thief and was enthusiastically regaled with the entire story by Vuka. Tionne couldn’t help but wonder at his genuine delight at hearing the adventures of her younger self – while she wasn’t going to die of humiliation at having it mentioned, it had never been her proudest moment. The whole thing had been silly from beginning to end. And yet, Kam somehow managed to get her laughing at it too. Maybe it was that he just didn’t give a bantha’s rear for his own pride – as entirely separate from dignity – and the condition was contagious in proximity.

Then someone handed her the double viol in its case that she had left back in the base camp. She strummed a few chords, considering what to play.

“Oh, come on. We all know you’re going to sing it.” Kyp shook his head and shot her a look that contained actual, honest to goodness humor for the first time she could recall.

And if someone gave her an opening like that, she wasn’t going to not sing “The Ballad of Nomi Sunrider”, now was she? Llinos quickly picked up the structure of the new tune and accompanied her. It felt like old times with the two of them singing to a cantina crowd.

 

Soon it was clearly well past the teenagers’ bedtimes as much as they protested otherwise, and Tionne and Kam helped the crew clear up the remainder of the mess that the research team hadn’t packed off back to the camp already. Saying goodbye was difficult. It had really been too long since Tionne had seen these people, and catching up with them was bittersweet in a way. So much had changed and so much was still the same with them. And she too was changing and still a bit the same. But she didn’t have the empty feeling she’d had when she first left the crew, watching the _Estrell_ take off without her.

 

With all of the tired teenagers and shivering reptavians squared away for the night, Tionne planned to head for her own bedroll soon as well. But she found herself drawn from the shelter by the sighing of the wind for a minute and paused there to look at the stars. The night sky on Ossus was one of the clearest Tionne had seen in all her travels; the stars blazed with an intensity that took her breath away. It looked as though Kam had also felt like stargazing, since she found him leaning against the landspeeder outside. She curled into the offered warmth of his arm around her shoulders and pressed a light kiss on the edge of his jaw.

No man who had spent the day trekking around in the dust of Ossus had any right to smell that good, she thought. They kissed again with more thoroughness before settling to watch the sky. It had been an interesting few months since she and Kam had made the decision to not push their mutual attraction but give it a chance all the same. There were good reasons not to rush into anything too quickly. Kam was still dealing with the process of integrating back into society after over a decade of induced amnesia and Sith mental conditioning – much of it spent living in a flattened emotional state that Tionne thought could probably be diagnosed as a mood disorder if not for the circumstances (and for the fact that it had mostly evaporated when he turned back to the light side of the Force). And Tionne was a complete rookie to the practical side of using the Force, as opposed to the historical aspects she had been gleaning information about for most of her life; she needed a lot of her concentration to go into her training. So here they were, seeking to maintain a delicate balance that Tionne knew made their progress as a pair seem glacial in its pace. But she felt surer every day that it was working.

In spite of the inevitable butterflies and anxieties that came with falling for someone, Tionne had always found that she defaulted to feeling comfortable around Kam. It was a different emotional realm from that of any romantic relationship that she could remember, not less passionately felt but with an underlying sense of being at ease – as though she had found something that she always knew was missing but couldn’t have named.

"You know, it's occurred to me that our sequencing is mixed up. First we had teenagers, then we went and took them with us to introduce you all to my family, and I don’t think either of us has so much as asked the other on a date.” She felt the quiet laughter rumbling in Kam’s chest, though she could barely hear it over the breeze.

“The more I learn, the more I think that nothing is really accidental.” He smiled and pulled Tionne closer, resting his chin on the top of her head for a minute. “Look at your old crew. They’re all smart, capable beings in their own ways, but not really ruthless enough to thrive living on the fringe. What are the odds of those people ending up in the same place? I get the impression that most of them were on the road to an early grave, but instead they found each other, helped each other – even somehow managed not to strangle each other living in close quarters.”

“A near thing sometimes, believe me.” She scanned the starscape for the pinpoint lights of a spacecraft already long gone from the atmosphere. “Funny thing, but I think they like you – even Llinos, and she’s a tough vweilu nut to crack. She never liked anyone I brought home.”

“Hmm. I’ll admit, I had expected them to be a bit more difficult in personality. Smugglers generally are. They weren’t at all what I thought they would be, and I’m glad.” Kam’s expression was hard to read and made more so by the night, but she thought she saw a spark of mischief. “Wouldn’t want to be in the bad graces of the in laws.”

“Don’t turn out to be a cultist of the Ember of Vahl.”

“I promise.”

“There, you’re set.” Tionne paused. “So the way that we met, a vagabond street musician with Jedi sympathies and a dark side adept who managed to ignore the obvious for weeks on end – that wasn’t a cosmic accident in your view?”

“I’m not exactly objective, but no.” Shifting his weight a bit in thought, Kam stretched and resettled. “I think we both had something to learn from crossing paths back then. You seemed – changed when I saw you last, before we met again. I was too, though I was foolish enough to think that I would lose all of the memory permanently.” Tionne squeezed his arm, probably more to reassure herself than Kam; she had met him back then and even the bare edge of his experience that she had perceived haunted her. “Now I think that the reverberations of an event are never really canceled, only changed.”

“Kam, I don’t know what kind of role fate or luck or choices might have played, but I’ll always be more than grateful to the Force that I didn’t lose you forever. I didn’t feel the way I do about you now, but I had begun to consider you a friend.” She smiled at his perplexed tilt of the head – one thing that, come to think of it, hadn’t changed since then. “Okay, so you were a really strange, probably ethically unfortunate and definitely unwise choice of friend – but a friend all the same. I really worried about what was going to happen to you, after. There was no reason for me to expect to ever know the outcome.” Tionne halted to let the tightness in her throat subside. “I’m glad you’re here. All the time. Every day.” She leaned into Kam’s hug.

“Same here.”

There was a constellation in the northwest that Tionne had learned to identify, the one that Trey had told her the Ysanna associated with the Tree of Ascent. That tree had actually turned out to be the hibernating Jedi Master Ood Bnar, and then been felled by an Imperial adept on awakening. In a way, she knew Bnar was a part of those stars now – and of the Ysanna, the Jedi, the Imperials, and even of herself and Kam as they stood staring up at the sky. Jedi philosophy was enough to give one a touch of vertigo on occasion.

 

Eventually, the temperature had dropped enough that both Jedi apprentices had to yield to the weather and head back into camp. Tionne thought of the nights at her childhood home on Rindao as she dropped off to sleep, and how her favorite constellation had been the one that locals called the Two Dragons (because it reminded her of the legend of Nomi Sunrider and her battle with the Hssiss).

Later she had been moving so often that she rarely had time to learn such details about the worlds where she set foot, but here and there she had picked up a few. And now there was also the Tree constellation, which reminded her of Kam, of Trey, Keena, and Rona, and of the breeze whispering through the ancient Jedi library at night. Maybe she would write a song about that, or maybe the song was already in the wind and needed nothing more. There was hope here, and the companionship of friends old and new -- and she and Kam were building something that she felt would have strong roots, however unlikely the origins might have been.

There was a sleep-muddled twitter from the next shelter where the Elellumiwi were resting as they sorted out the arrangement of claws and beaks so that they were out of the way of stomachs and wings. “Nice flowers,” she heard one of the reptavians comment to the others.

“Think they might have been decorative?”

“Nah.”


End file.
